Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
26 Mar Lessons Learned on the Rational Design of International Environmental Agreeements
...would expect them to design treaties based on functional considerations. But since functional considerations often point in different directions, they do not produce determinate results. Moreover, as Kal Raustiala persuasively argued in his AJIL piece, “Form and Substance in International Agreements,” many other factors also influence negotiations – including, in particular, domestic politics. So functional explanations are, at best, incomplete. But my concern here is with a different use of the rational design literature: not its value ex post in explaining existing agreements, but its value ex ante in designing...
25 Feb More Than Rhetoric? International Criminal Justice, Crime Semantics and the Role of the ICC in the Ukraine Conflict
[Carsten Stahn is Professor of International Criminal Law and Global Justice at Leiden Law School.] ‘In times of war, the law falls silent’ (silent enim leges inter arma). This famous maxim by Cicero is often used to illustrate the lack of power of law in the face of conquest and occupation. In the discourse over the war in Ukraine, we witness the opposite. As Marko Milanović has shown in his analysis of recognition, it is a ‘communicative war’, a battle where legal semantics are at the forefront of justifications and...
26 Jun Between Recognition and Denial: Reading Recent Recognition Initiatives in Light of Earlier Milestones in Madrid, Oslo and the General Assembly
statehood, international lawyers often retreat to the trap of declaratory versus constitutive statehood. Such frameworks have not helped Palestinians before and they won’t now. At best, interrogating these typologies reveals how contingent and political the process of state-making is. As Joseph Weiler noted in 2013 in the wake of Palestine’s recognition as a non-member observer state at the UN in 2012, embracing either a constitutive or a declarative stance is unhelpful in the face of Palestine’s own ‘differentiated’, but nevertheless, ‘evolving’ statehood. Similarly, today, we find ourselves as international lawyers...
06 Oct The Russian Citizenship Law in Ukraine and International Law
Ministry of Internal Affairs. No requirement such as the 5-year period of permanent residence in Russia nor the evidence of sufficient funds to live in the country is envisaged. This post argues that this act amounts to a violation of international law, in particular to an interference in Ukrainian domestic affairs and a threat to Ukrainian sovereignty. Domestic Law Ukrainian officials, in particular the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mr Dmytro Kuleba, declared that this act is a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and an interference in the State’s own domestic affairs....
22 Jan Applying International Law to the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict
claimed that its occupation of Crimea is legal because the people of Crimea voted to join Russia. However, the international law community has overwhelmingly found Russia’s annexation of Crimea illegal, so to the extent that the comparison rings true, it could serve as an indictment of an illegal occupation. In 1993, the UN passed four resolutions condemning both Armenia and Azerbaijan for their actions in the then-war but the resolutions did refer to the NKAO as “occupied” twelve times. But the resolutions never specifically said the troops were Armenian. However,...13 Jun Events and Announcements: 12 June 2021
including Refugee Law, Human Rights Law, International Criminal Law, and general Public International Law. They will share their experiences of building a career in International Law and will also answer questions from aspiring international lawyers. For more information and to register, please see here. European Court of Human Rights’ Webinar on ‘Police Power and National Emergency’: The Criminal Law Group of the European Court of Human Rights, in cooperation with the University of Bologna, Liverpool John Moores University, Zagreb Law Faculty and ‘Beyond Detention’ Interest Group is convening a series...22 Mar The ICC and Israel: Prosecuting the Punitive Demolition of Palestinian Homes – Part 1
West Bank as one of occupation, and hence an IAC to which IHL applies, should not raise any serious legal issues and is acknowledged by the Israeli Supreme Court. (The question of the conventional applicability of GCIV in the West Bank and whether this is condition for war crimes under Art. 8(2)(a) of the Statute is beyond the scope of this post. However, it can be argued that the grave breaches provisions of GCIV underlying Art. 8(2)(a) crimes need only apply as a matter of customary law. Note that this...
08 Apr The False Premise Sustaining Israel’s West Bank Claim – Part I
[Victor Kattan is a Senior Research Fellow of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore where he heads the Transsystemic Law Cluster . He is also an Associate Fellow of NUS Law . This is the first part of a two-part post.] One of the concerns that arose from US President Donald Trump’s Proclamation recognising the occupied Golan Heights – captured from Syria in the June 1967 War – as part of the state of Israel, was whether it could serve as a precedent for the future...09 Mar Ukraine Insta-Symposium: The Crisis in Crimea–The Protection of Nationals Abroad and the Legality of Ukraine’s Possible Use of Force in Self-Defense
to act in individual or collective self-defense. The answer is no – despite the conclusion made by the Ukrainian Association of International Law that Russia’ military action in Crimea “provides legal grounds” for Ukraine exercising its right of individual or collective self-defense. True, states’ reactions to the occupations of South Korea in 1950, the Falkland Islands in 1982 and Kuwait in 1990 leave no doubt that the commencement of occupation clearly amounts to the commencement of an armed attack. Furthermore, the 1974 Definition of Aggression and the Amendments to the...